Monday, April 28, 2025
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Homelessness: An Undying Crisis of Invisibility

Jeevan Ravindran
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Homelessness: An Undying Crisis of Invisibility

On a Tuesday afternoon on Bromley High Street, in London’s most south-eastern borough, It doesn’t come as a surprise to witness many of the homeless begging for the spare change of uncaring and often oblivious by-passers. Yet, this wasn’t the case just a few years ago: homelessness in Bromley is on the increase, in accordance with the trend seen across the majority of Greater London. Indeed, the rate of this increase across the capital is staggering; according to the Greater London Authority’s Chain report, 8,855 people were seen sleeping rough in the city during 2018-19, an increase of 1,371 from the previous year.

At the time Dawn became homeless, she was one of 8,096 people sleeping rough across the year in London. She’d been living in Hampshire and had just been refused the renewal of her lease because her landlady had alternative wishes for the property. With Dawn losing the custody of her son, and her daughter being given up for adoption, things all became too much. Dawn found herself dealing with a mental breakdown, following which she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

“I’d come to London because I was really not well, mentally. I was scared of everything, scared of going out, scared of doing things. With that breakdown, it was the scariest place I’ve ever been in, in my life.”

With few options, Dawn asked the local council whether she would be entitled to the same accommodation options in London as she was in Hampshire. They replied that she would, but did not inform her that she would have to wait for the bailiffs to arrive before leaving in order to be classified as being “unintentionally homeless” when she then pursued accommodation options. 

“When I went to (the council in London), they said, ‘No, you’ve made yourself intentionally homeless (because you didn’t wait for the bailiffs in Hampshire)’. Then they wouldn’t help me. They stitched me up. I didn’t know what to do, I still don’t know what to do.”

Dawn was temporarily staying at an ex-boyfriend’s house as she attempted to deal with the tail-end of her mental breakdown but was forced onto the streets after falling out with him one day, which she said made her feel “terrified.” “I think the only thing that kept me from doing that [committing suicide] was my kids. Even though I ain’t got my children, they was the only thing I think that was keeping me a little bit sane. If it weren’t for them, I think I would have ended up killing myself, I really would have.”

However, Dawn has kept her homelessness a secret from her five children. Even her 15-year-old son, the only family member with whom she is in regular contact with, is not aware of her living situation. Dawn makes a special effort to speak to him at least once or twice a week, visiting the local library to contact him via the internet.

“He’d just worry. He suffers from depression and I don’t want to worry him. I don’t want them knowing. And I can’t even dry my hair. I ain’t got money or nowhere to do that.” 

The homelessness crisis isn’t entirely evident to all who pass by. 74-year-old Patricia, who has lived in the area all her life, argues that, whilst there are more homeless people now than there used to be, the government is doing enough to help.

“That girl there,” she says, pointing to Dawn. “She must have a family somewhere. Why don’t her family support her? Maybe she’s done something horrible they don’t agree with.”

For Dawn, family life before homelessness wasn’t simple either. As a child, Dawn was raised by her grandfather, a man she says was “everything” to her.

“I didn’t know what a mum was till I was about six. My mum, when she took us back, saw me as the black sheep. I wasn’t part of the family. I left home at 13 to live with my boyfriend. She pushed me out to move in with her man, when I was 13 and he was 21. That’s bad, isn’t it?”

Around the time her mum reappeared in her life, Dawn also began to be sexually abused by her cousin, from the ages of six to eleven.

“It’s hard to trust,” she says of the impact it has had on her other relationships, including with her son’s father, who she says physically and emotionally abused her. 

“But I thought that (physical abuse) messed something up in my life, and I wouldn’t let him ruin any more of it.”

Dawn is relatively new to the Bromley area, having come to the borough around Christmas 2018 to join her boyfriend, Kenneth, who is also homeless. She says she has to avoid certain accommodation options available due to a recent influx of alcoholics and drug addicts. She has previously suffered from addiction to heroin and Valium herself, as has Kenneth, who currently struggles with an addiction to the prescription drugs he has been using to treat his back problem.

Whenever they can get the money together, Dawn and Kenneth stay in a hostel, where they are able to change and shower – however this is difficult, as it depends on how much money they can make on the streets. Dawn says they don’t always beg, if they find somewhere to stay, like “a car that’s had its wheels taken off,” they’ll spend some time there for a bit of respite. 

“There’s so much of it that people switch off,” says Kenneth. “People get immune and they get numb to that ‘Can you spare any change?’ question. People get numb to it, if you hear it too much. And you become invisible, you know what I mean?”

However, Kenneth takes a slightly different approach – he doesn’t say anything to try and stop passers-by, but just thanks those who do stop to make a donation.

“People can see for themselves my situation and if they want to help, then I’m happy about that, but if they don’t, then I understand that too.”

He acknowledges that living on the streets has become a way of life for him, describing how he has become accustomed to it over time.

“I think the worst thing about it is that it gets easier. In the beginning it’s hard because you don’t really know what to do or where to go. When you try to find a place or find somewhere to live, you try everywhere you can and you get nothing back. You get really disillusioned with it. And you give up, basically.”

Before Kenneth became homeless, he was living in a room in Bromley, and was relying on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), which Dawn also claimed.

“The benefits changed from ESA to Universal Credit and there was a long gap of maybe 2 months or something before they pay you. In that gap, I couldn’t pay my rent at all.”

After staying with friends for a few nights, he took to the streets after realising he couldn’t keep staying with them in the long-term.

“I stayed out the first night and it wasn’t too bad because it was kind of warm, and I’ve kind of been out here ever since.”

Like Dawn, Kenneth has also tried various avenues for help, and says he is unable to get out of his situation because he is not a priority. 

“Everywhere I go, I try to find accommodation or whatever. I don’t have much luck. They seem to think I’m not a priority, but I think I am a priority. I just feel like everywhere, they’re trying to push you onto someone else. You’re just ticking their boxes. It’s more about them than it is about me.”

Under previous UK legislation, priority groups such as pregnant women, people with dependent children and “vulnerable” individuals must be provided with emergency housing – something non-priority cases like Kenneth were not entitled to. This changed with the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act in 2018, which obliged councils to provide assistance to all the homeless. In addition to this, the government provided almost £73 million to help councils carry this out– although think tank the New Local Government Authority found that almost two-thirds of councils thought this was not enough.

Whilst such legislation provides an important step forward, there are still several root causes of homelessness which remain at play. The independent organisation Homeless Impact recently highlighted a number of these, such as the lack of social and affordable housing, and the freezing of the Local Housing Allowance until 2020, due to the fact that some areas do not have available properties which fall within the remit of the allowance provided. Austerity policies under the Conservative government, which cut council funding sharply and forced them to redistribute funds, have long been blamed by activists for the increase in homelessness. Even the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government James Brokenshire admitted in December 2018 that the government needed to ask itself “some very hard questions” about the policy, which had also led to numerous benefit cuts.

Although Kenneth has previously worked as a fitness trainer and plasterer, he is unable to get a job as he never knows where he is going to be from one day to the next, and also suffers from mental health problems in addition to his back issues. Following one particularly bad breakdown, he was sectioned for a few months but was then released, returning straight back onto the streets.

“They decided there was nothing wrong with me, but somebody must have decided there was in the beginning since they got me to go there. With me and my situation, and you haven’t got say family or support, nobody’s going to ask questions. You’re not going to be missed. That’s the scary part of it.”

However, despite the lack of support, he says he can “see the best in people” in Bromley. Just then, a woman stops him on her way to the gym to ask if he would like a cup of tea, and he nods, beamingly. Minutes later, she returns out of breath with a hot cup of tea.

“You get people like that, really good people. She’ll buy me food, or a drink, a good woman. And you get a lot of that here.”

Dawn agrees, fretting over whether she remembered to say thank you to a lady who stopped to give her some change a few minutes ago.

Kenneth says that, despite receiving kindness from many, he has often been on the receiving end of orchestrated attacks. “When I was sleeping I’ve been urinated on. Somebody set my tent on fire. It just went up like a bonfire. When I was in the tent, I could hear them and the next thing you know, I heard like a lighter and the corner of my tent went up. Obviously, I jumped out. And they found it funny. Four of them they were, and they found it funny.”

He says the reason he’s suffered such attacks is because being homeless makes you an easy target, as you are cut off from society and have nobody to turn to for help. 
“I find that really unacceptable. I’m already on the floor, I’m already in the gutter as it is. And I feel like anyone picking on me, it’s the lowest you can get, really.”

A few metres away from Dawn and Kenneth, in the doorway of Tesco, sits 46-year-old Jimmy Smith, who has been homeless for 4 years. His life on the streets began after a stint in prison for “bad things,” and he had nowhere to go when he came out.

“I’ve been a very violent man. I am what I look like. But I’m too old for all that now, so I just sit here and try and get my little bit of money together.”

Jimmy manages to get into hostel once or twice a week, just like Dawn and Kenneth.

“It was very difficult starting life on the streets. Trusting society is very difficult. I had to sit and beg. I’ve got to get at least a tenner tonight to get into a hostel. I’ve got about £9 to go, £9.20.”However, Jimmy thinks most people are not very forthcoming with donations at the moment. “Most people don’t even look at me,” he says, echoing Kenneth’s statement of invisibility on the streets. 

For 18-year-old student, Ovis Mahmood, who stops to give Dawn some spare change, the increase in the number of homeless people is shocking but not surprising, and he says he “never used to see [homeless people].”

 “[The increase] is probably happening in all the London boroughs,” he adds. 

He’s not entirely wrong. Bromley recorded the fourth-lowest number of rough sleepers for an outer London borough, with 47 people documented in the Chain report for 2018-19. This is a number that has remained fairly constant in recent years. Although there are many reasons for homelessness, such as relationship breakdowns and major health issues. After the rolling out of austerity in 2010, 5,678 rough sleepers were tracked by charity Crisis in 2011-12. Back then, Bromley had less than half its current number of rough sleepers, with only twenty-two. This staggering increase holds true for most outer London boroughs, with Barnet recording a 2018-19 figure more than four times its 2011-12 number.

“I don’t think I’m getting a fair deal,” says Kenneth. “It’s the government’s fault. Because no one should be homeless really, not when there’s so many places empty.”

Dawn agrees, saying that she “ain’t got a clue” why homelessness is increasing, but unequivocally affirms that the government is not doing enough.

“No, definitely not. I don’t think they ever have, really. They need to pull their finger out a bit more.”

However, she and Kenneth do their best to remain positive, with both affirming that they do see a future which does not involve rough sleeping. Kenneth says he is going to get in touch with Adult Welfare, as he has recently been given their contact number, and Dawn says that she will try to get an advocate to help her with her benefits claim. 

“I feel like I’m sitting here waiting for an opportunity to come,” says Kenneth. “And I think one will come. And if it does, obviously I’m going to take it.”

“I just want to get my old life back,” says Dawn, who is also a self-confessed foodie and says she would love to visit India again one day, having been there about ten years ago.

“I just want to go back to Hampshire and be with my son. If I get off the streets, I’ll have my life better than I ever had it before. It will happen.” 

Names have been changed in this article to protect the individuals’ identities.

Christ Church blasted by former minister

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Christ Church blasted by former minister

Jonathan Aitken, who was both an MP and Chief Secretary to the Treasury under John Major, has accused his former college Christ Church of misusing funds in a fight against their own dean, Martyn Percy. 

Aitken wrote a letter to the Charity Commission, in which it is claimed that the college had already spent £1.6 million on the case and it is “probable that the Governing Body will have to pay more than £2 million of its charitable funds”.

In the letter, Aitken wrote the following; “The scandal of wrongful charitable governance at Christ Church has grown, is continuing to grow and will soon become notorious as a result of media coverage, action by angry members of the wider Christ Church community, withdrawal of support by charitable donors and possible questions in Parliament.” 

“The question I and many other concerned observers of this scandal now want to know is: What is the Charity Commission doing about it?” 

Aitken was particularly critical of the attempt to have ‘large parts of the Tribunal’s report censored or redacted’, dubbing this ‘the worst part of the Christ Church scandal so far’.

Alongside his letter to the charity commission, Aitken gave Cherwell the following comment, “Like many members of the Christ Church Alumni Association, I regard it as a scandal of governance that the full Governing Body of the College has been refused sight of a full, unredacted copy of the Tribunal’s findings and reasons for clearing the Dean of all charges.”

“The notion that a small cabal of anti-Dean Dons can censor the Tribunal’s report is an attempt at self-serving protection for themselves because they are severely criticised in the Appendices of the report.”

“The wounds at Christ Church need to be healed, in the longer term, by a sustained effort by all parties towards truth and reconciliation. This remains impossible as long as the truth contained in the Tribunal’s findings is not allowed to be seen by the Governing Body. In my mind the big question is: ‘Can the Governing Body govern itself?”

A statement from the Charity commission in response to Aitken letter said that: “While the trustees in this case appear to have followed the charity’s rules, the large sums reportedly spent on the tribunal are of concern. We have therefore told the trustees to set out the actual costs involved and explain how they oversaw and controlled them.”

The charity commission added more recently that they “told the trustees of Christ Church to undertake a review of the charity’s governance. It is good practice for all charities to undertake such a review from time to time. We will not be involved in the review directly, but we expect the trustees to report to us on its outcome.”

When contacted for comment, a spokesperson for Christ Church said that, “As required by Christ Church’s Statutes, an internal tribunal was convened to consider a complaint raised against the Dean, which was subsequently dismissed. We are not yet in a position to confirm the total costs, but can confirm that the legal costs are being met out of Christ Church’s unrestricted funds and will not be directly funded by any donations.”

In a recent letter to undergraduates, Dean Martyn Percy said: “I am writing to thank you for your support of Christ Church over these past months. This has not been an easy year for the House, but I want to reassure you that we are committed to Christ Church and its flourishing. Like a family, even in the midst of difficult times, we retain our core purposes and identity.

“It will take time to reflect on the events of the past year, and we would ask you to allow us the space to do this. The House will need to carefully consider the tribunal process and, more generally, its governance arrangements. The latter will be reviewed through an independent review as has been recommended by the Charity Commission. I ask you to please bear with us whilst we undertake this important work. As you can appreciate, we will not be commenting further until the review has been concluded.”

A Very British Coup

Beatrice Barr
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A Very British Coup

In Mike Bartlett’s 2014 play, Charles III, the nation is plunged into constitutional crisis as the fictional king withholds royal assent from a bill which would limit the freedom of the press. Wrestling between his sense of public duty and his constitutional ability to pursue what he deems the moral choice, King Charles undermines a century of constitutional precedent and exploits the royal prerogative to stop the bill – and revolution breaks out. Whilst this is may be mere fiction, such treacherous politics does not currently sit too far from our reality; just last week, remainers in the Commons showed zealous support for a very similar plan.

Remainers were supposedly once the liberal moderates of British politics. With this status in mind, what could possibly have driven their hardcore wing to call on Her Majesty to defy a Prime Minister, in a scheme which sounded more like a bad Radio 4 drama than centrist politics? Only hours before this farce, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to prorogue Parliament, in a bid to inhibit MPs from preventing a no-deal Brexit, had been revealed. For one bizarre moment, the Queen appeared to be the only way out.

The first problem for the public was how to hashtag the event; a crisis we find ourselves in every time British politics switches on its pantomime mode. While politicians were falling over each other at the door of Balmoral, Twitter was struggling with its conjugations. Prerogue? Proroge? Prorogue. #prorogue? #prorogation? The Google Trend shot to peak interest rapidly. 

The second problem was that this was all, well, entirely legal.

The royal prerogative – long the concern of only constitutional scholars and the occasional politics A-Level student – is one of the more arcane peculiarities of the British constitution (or, rather, lack of). Yet, it is simultaneously the founding principle of executive government in our country. Defined broadly as the authority, privilege, and immunity of the monarch, its real practical significance is the monarch’s ability to refuse assent for a law passed by parliament. Political power is exercised by the Crown-in-Parliament, and the Queen governs on the advice of her ministers; this means that, in practice, she gives her assent to any law that Parliament passes. However, the Queen has one secret weapon: supreme political authority. When the new Prime Minister prorogued Parliament last week in order to lubricate the passage of a no-deal Brexit and by-pass the Tory infighting that has plagued the EU debate, the Queen’s overruling power was the sole weapon that Remainer Twitter hoped might be brought to use.

It doesn’t matter if the remainers were serious in their aspirations. It matters that the Queen was, for a moment, a viable way out. It’s a drama fit for the stage, not for Parliament, and it looks like something out of another century. Both opposing sides had put all their hopes in covert elements of our uncodified constitution: the Brexiteers in proroguing Parliament, and the Remainers in the possibility of the Queen saying ‘no’. 

Although surprising to most of us, proroguing Parliament is a weapon that Prime Ministers have used before. Though more associated with Charles I and the Civil War, it has been used as recently as 1997, when John Major used it to avoid the Cash for Questions scandal. This is, ironically, the very same John Major who last week joined Gina Miller, of Brexit legal-challenge fame, in challenging the prorogation in the courts. This was, undoubtedly, a noble aim, yet one which Major must surely have known was doomed to failure, as a consequence of his own hypocrisy. Yet just as the prospect of an unelected Prime Minister preventing the legislature from sitting to consider a bill which might undermine his legislative agenda is an insult to representative democracy, so is the prospect of either side using the Queen – an unelected, hereditary and typically ceremonial monarch – to block or encourage Brexit legislation. 

Parliament is now currently being prorogued for a whole month, thanks to an ancient constitutional procedure. The Commons tried to stop a no-deal Brexit, and Boris Johnson responded in the most cruelly logical way possible: by purging his own party. He soldiered, or perhaps snowballed on, with a majority of negative 43. Tories as blue-blooded as Nicholas Soames, the grandson of no other than Churchill, found themselves rejected by a party they no longer recognised – not unlike the Yvette Coopers of the opposite benches. The purge was self-perpetuating: Amber Rudd quit the government and the Tory Whip, either martyring herself or conveniently regenerating her reputation following the Windrush scandal. Johnson clamoured for an election: ignoring the absolute inevitability of a hung parliament, an election presented the opportunity to get the majority he needed to “get on with it”. But Parliament wouldn’t let him; Boris was left scuppered, again by the inconvenience of a majority having purged his own party. 

Although surrounded on all sides, the Prime Minister didn’t stop there. Far from offering more funding to schools, social care, state pensions or any other friendly institution which might distract from the Tories’ internal implosion, he chose to make a speech against a backdrop of police recruits. To say the least, the PR wasn’t positive. One recruit fainted, having waited in the sun for an hour for a Prime Minister who seems to treat public engagements like the editor’s desk of the Spectator. If a backdrop of the police forces wasn’t dystopian enough, Johnson’s failure to aid the fainting woman didn’t help. To top this all off, his speech was, well, shabby.

The blunders of the rest of the week are so many as to blur into one. First of all, the new PM proved that he’s still not quite outgrown Eton, labelling the leader of the opposition a “great big girl’s blouse”. Neither has he outgrown Oxford, as documents were published showing the PM to have described David Cameron, who famously beat him to a first, as a “girly swot”. ‘Stop the coup’ protests continued across the country. 

Johnson’s failures have not only humiliated his premiership, his right-hand man and his party, but have given Britain the most viable opposition its had in years. Whilst Jeremy Corbyn appeared, for the first time, as the most competent leader in PMQs, Jo Swinson raked in the new defections – the most in the Lib Dems’ history. 

Britain is left to its third Tory PM in as many years, with a majority-less Prime Minister who has more respect for the counsel of his Moriarty-wannabe right hand man, Dominic Cummings, than the grandees who he fired from his party. Chaos with Ed Miliband looks quite appealing after all. 

The peculiarities of the English constitution have made their way from theatre to the theatre of politics; the decisions which provoke revolution in Charles IIIare mild in comparison to the realities of the past two weeks. To steal the words of another political drama, it’s all a Very British Coup. 

Britain’s curious constitutional framework holds ultimate responsibility for the drama of the last week. We are very good at concentrating on the ceremonial role of the monarchy, their extravagant weddings and their private jet flights, rather than on the ultimate constitutional power which an activist monarch could exercise at any time. We typically assume that such a monarch would provoke revolution, as in Charles III. But during the month in which Parliament was prorogued, Philip Hammond was kicked out the Tory party and Jacob Rees-Mogg turned up at Balmoral, can we really be so sure?

The English constitution relies far too heavily on tradition, convention, and the Queen not stepping out of line to be an active player in politics. Such flexibility has traditionally been its strength: Britain banned handguns with a simple majority, whilst the American constitution all but prevents gun control. Critically, the guardians of the British constitution are MPs (though the role of the Supreme Court grows); the guardians of the US constitution are political appointees who serve for life. 

Such flexibility means that the fundamentals of the constitution have remained largely intact for the past 500 years. The constitutional reforms of New Labour introduced some rigidity with devolution and the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, but none struck the sanctity of the simple majority.

The simple majority has been Brexit’s greatest hurdle from the start: there was no majority for May’s deal or for no-deal – only for some sort of pipe-dream deal that doesn’t exist. This very hurdle is preventing Johnson from calling an election, even with his negative parliamentary majority. 

The ways in which different nations have sought to subvert this fundamental democratic principle are based inextricably within their political culture. Proroguing Parliament under the guise of a Queen’s speech reminds us that the procedures of the British constitution have hardly developed since the Civil War; indeed, they have hardly developed since the very founding of America. This says almost as much about our political culture as Jacob Rees-Mogg turning up to Balmoral in a double-breasted suit to lobby the Queen, then falling asleep later during a Parliamentary debate. For a PM with the tactics of a Union hack and the attitude of a columnist, a constitutional loophole to avoid a majority is an obvious tactic – and one which says more about our political culture than anything else. 

It’s tempting to visualise the way Brexit would play out if Britain had the constitution of America: constitutional amendments, two-thirds majorities and perhaps a major constitutional convention. There would be procedure, in a way which doesn’t exist in Britain. But to imagine this is to ignore the predestiny of the Brexit process: with a constitution like ours, there would never have been any other way. 

But perhaps no constitutional arrangement would be better. Perhaps we might be better off with constitution which tends towards conservatism, thanks to a Supreme Court bench whose simple majority is right-wing, such as in the US. Or maybe we require a political culture whose tradition of popular action means strikes prevent almost any meaningful change, as in France. Every democracy has its own methods of self-inhibition – isn’t it fitting that ancient procedure should be our methodology?

British politics is founded in a ceremony of traditional power which we would very much like to ignore. Yet, the past two weeks have forced us to acknowledge that we can no longer remain ignorant. We are compelled, now, to recognise the fragility of our political framework, and understand the inconvenient truth that the Queen, and words such as ‘proroguing’, are still as relevant as ever before.

Oxford University tops global rankings for fourth year running

Jeevan Ravindran
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Oxford University tops global rankings for fourth year running

The University of Oxford ranked first in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings for the fourth year running.

According to the data provider, the classification is the result of a compilation of “13 carefully calibrated performance indicators” which include “teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.”

The 2020 list sees the University of Cambridge fall to third place, behind the California Institute of Technology in the United States, which is up three places from last year. The rest of the top ten is comprised entirely of American universities, including Harvard, Stanford and Yale – apart from Imperial College London, which falls one place from its 2019 ranking to stand in tenth place.

Despite improvements reported across Europe by the organisers, with Italian representation improving and Germany remaining strong. The German government’s Excellence Initiative, which gives additional funding to universities, is reported to have helped in this respect, sas have European Union research grants.

However, they warn “the UK faces declines” despite continuing to occupy two of the top three places. They note that the UK has 28 universities in the top 200, six fewer than in the 2016 rankings – and that 18 of the 28 have fallen in the rankings since last year.

China is the leading Asian contender, with Tsinghua University and Peking University at numbers 23 and 24 respectively, with several universities rising in the ranks since 2019.

Meanwhile, Brunei, Cuba, Malta, Montenegro, Puerto Rico and Vietnam were among the countries to be represented for the first time in this year’s rankings, which include almost 1,400 universities in more than 92 countries.

Review: Lover by Taylor Swift

Jess Curry
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Review: Lover by Taylor Swift

‘I’ve been sleeping in a twenty-year night/now I see daylight.’ After the series of messy public spats that have characterized Swift’s public persona since 2016, her recent album seems like a new dawn. Her last album Reputation was a product that, for all its creative ingenuity, was a confusing mix of poignant love songs and petty callouts. Now, in Lover, Swift has created an album that captures the exhilaration of love – be it for boyfriend or best friend. Refreshingly there exists a lack of antagonists. Even her break-up songs focus on ‘saying good-bye’ (‘Death by a Thousand Cuts’) rather than a war cry. Whilst the album spans a few dud tracks (attempts to broaden her reach with conventional pop creates a forgettable mono-sound in ‘ME!’ and ‘You Need To Calm Down’), when Swift leans into her strengths, Lover brings us some of her best songs yet.

Her first song ‘I Forgot that You Existed’ is a pop-y, light-hearted nod to the ‘nightmare’ (Swift’s words) era of her life that produced Reputation. A clap-back song but barely with the punch of a long-held breath finally released, she establishes continuity with her last album while switching out light piano chords and finger snaps for trap, indifference for bitterness. It certainly would have been a much better first introduction to the album than the hemorrhage-inducing ‘ME!’ (its bridge – ‘Hey kids, spelling is fun!’ remains unforgivable, even if it has been quietly removed from most versions). If ‘I Forgot’ is the song you listen to when you’re in your happy place, then ‘ME’ is what you sing along to at a pre’s whilst pretending to be ‘fine’ before an inevitable nightclub meltdown.

It’s a relief to hear Swift spend more time where her strength lies in songs like ‘I Think He Knows’ and the pop-punk ‘Paper Rings’. I’d tentatively make this a trifecta with ‘London Boy’, although some Londoners made the point that, for those with the local knowledge, its rogue name-dropping stretches romanticism to the point of ridiculous. The giddiness of these songs are just so much fun. Reminiscent of ‘Dress’ and ‘Delicate’, they showcase a unique gift of Swift’s; she’s so invigorated by the concept of falling in love, it’s difficult not to get swept up in the excitement too. Her juxtaposition of personal detail and ubiquitous experience – ‘The moon is high like your friends were the night that we first met/Went home and tried to stalk you on the internet’ – is as winsome as ever. In her slower songs, pushing her signature synth-heavy style in new directions reaps reward, most interestingly in the St. Vincent co-written, straight up ethereal ‘Cruel Summer’. Elsewhere, ‘It’s Nice to Have a Friend’, completely stripped back, sounds like nothing she’s done before with a nostalgia that brings listeners right back to Fearless tracks like ‘The Best Day’.

In spite of the pastel theme then, this is a grown-up Taylor, more experienced, more introspective and, perhaps allowed by this self-assurance, more vulnerable. Confessing her uncertainty for the future of her mother’s battle with cancer, she sings ‘Holy orange bottles, each night I pray to you/Desperate people find faith so now I pray to Jesus too’.  It was always her naked emotion that allowed audiences to easily connect to her music, and she deploys this in half-sung, half-whispered with sledge-hammer effect in ‘Soon You’ll Get Better’. Starting most prominently with ‘You Need to Calm Down’, Swift has taken an overt public political stance for the first time in her career, prompting the US president to claim he now likes her music ‘25% less’. In ‘The Man’, Swift unequivocally claims that she, along with other high-profile women, face double standards in media representation, a claim with which this author agrees. In her most complex song, ‘Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince’, her decision to set her state-of-the-nation song in a Fearless-style Highschool allows it to be ‘meta’ as well as metaphorical. Showing America’s Sweetheart’s personal disillusionment with American nationalism, she sighs ‘Boys will be boys then, where are the wise men? Honey I’m scared.’ Us too Taylor, us too.

From pop to experimental to country and back, a careful structure pins the tracks together to allow the album to be eclectic without falling into complete incoherence. Colour exists as a thematic motif – bright christmas lights in ‘Lover’, indigo eyes in ‘I Think He Knows’, and it is in her final track that this is pulled together: ‘I once believed love would be black and white… believed love would be burning red. But it’s golden. Like daylight, like daylight’

Paying tribute to Reputation and Red, Swift is celebrating a new kind of maturity, allowing for both vulnerability and empathy. Because of this, it is in Lover that Swift has best distilled the spectrum that makes up music’s most celebrated emotion.

Million-pound bid to transform Oxford’s Covered Market

Rachel Cordery
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Million-pound bid to transform Oxford’s Covered Market

Oxford City Council have submitted a £2 million funding bid as part of a larger plan that would transform the Covered Market.

A successful bid, submitted to Historic England’s High Street Heritage Action, would unlock a multi-million-pound investment in Oxford’s treasured market.

Later this year, the council will work with traders, shoppers and stakeholders to develop potential proposals.

While a precise cost has not yet been announced, investment is expected to enter the millions. Proposals will consider improving the entrances and facade to the Covered Market, among other developments.

First opened in 1774, the market features more than 50 traders. The transformation aims to increase footfall and improve the trading environment for local independent businesses, as well as to encourage more local shoppers.

A Grade II-listed building, Oxford City Council already invests £3.1 million into the Covered Market to secure its long-term future.

Councillor Mary Clarkson, Cabinet Member for Culture and City Centre, said: “Oxford Covered Market has been in continuous use since the late 18th century. Oxford City Council is its custodian, and it’s our duty to secure the market for future generations.”

“Our aim with this project is to transform the market, create new jobs and increase footfall – and ensure the Covered Market remains the jewel in the crown of Oxford’s retail offer.”

The first proposals, known as a “masterplan”, will be complete by the end of 2020. The Council has been supported in the big by a variety of businesses, including the Covered Market Tenants’ Association and a number of University of Oxford colleges.

The wider vision is to create an Oxford Market Quarter of small, independent traders. If successful, it is hoped that the investment will support the development of a wider Market Quarter, working with other landlords in the area.

Debbie Dance, Director of Oxford Preservation Trust, said: “Securing this funding will act as leverage for other support, acting as a catalyst to allow a new vibrant centre for the city, allowing partnership opportunities to develop spreading much needed investment into the surrounding streets.”

“Together this will allow the creation of an exciting and revitalised place for all the residents of the city, and across all walks of its life, creating a sense of place and belonging for more diverse, different and exciting new audiences, improving the health and well being for all.”

Sex, drugs and gender roles: Frank Turner’s historical concept album

Sam Millward
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Sex, drugs and gender roles: Frank Turner’s historical concept album

I often hope that those who attempt to play Frank Turner’s songs, on whatever instrument, struggle as much as I do. It is never really a question of the technical aspect, or rhythm, or forgetting the lyrics, but the overwhelming sense that a terrible injustice is occurring. You reach the end of the first verse (or you’ve already lost it by then), and have to witness the unending expansion of the chasm between the intended output and whatever sonic foolery has instead transpired. Any bedroom or music lesson rendition of a song from one of Turner’s eight studio albums strives in some way to replicate an energy and identity which, to even the cursory listener, is unmistakable, and for this very reason remains continually elusive. In looking through reviews of said albums, some modal descriptions appear and reappear: “intensely personal”, “sincere”, “earnest”. Whoever he may be, whatever he is saying, there seems to be a wide consensus that Turner says what he means, and sometimes problematically, means what he says. 

The latter part of this chiasmus rears its head in relevance almost exclusively in the fields of Turner’s politics and social background. The son of an investment banker, educated at Eton and grandson of a former BHS Chairman, any claims to proletarian roots or comments on the necessity of class struggle would have likely borne a short flight, before falling into accusations of hypocrisy and sceptical reflection on his upbringing. Yet, unlike many artists who inhabit the NME- jargon-styled semi-genre of “folk-punk”, Turner does not address left wing issues, or really many political talking points at all in his music. There are a few obvious exceptions from his early work (cf. ‘Thatcher Fucked the Kids’ on the EP Campfire Punkrock), but relationships, common human experiences and emotional struggle more frequently figure the subject matter of his balladry. There is a fairly simple reason for this. A lifelong Libertarian, Turner found that expressing his right wing views (collected and arranged into a suitably accusatory highlight reel here) met with nothing, but vitriol and condemnation. Commentators both musical and political, and even various Members of Parliament have jumped to deride his condemnation of the left, a leap I too feel compelled to make at times, but Turner consistently, if paradoxically, denies any engagement with the political sphere. 

As quoted in a 2012 article by his illustrious confrere in the folk scene, Billy Bragg (both a stalwart and vanguard of British protest music), Frank Turner has refused to align his self-expression with traditional definitions of political discourse. “No, it’s not [political]” he said. “It’s just me saying what I think”. Bragg himself goes on to assign this position the moniker of “post-ideological”, resistant to the vocabulary of a bygone era of cultural and counter revolution. Turner did not play on the picket lines and would therefore not stand by and watch their fading remnants divide his music from his beliefs. This is arguably a valid defence of his refusal to ‘bite’, when so often questioned about his ideological stances. Just as the anarchist movement refused to partake in the electoral politics of Billy Bragg’s youth, Turner refuses to implicate himself and his work within a discourse that he does not feel offers fitting vestments. Following in the footsteps of various artists before him, the voraciously well-read Turner tends not to chime in on the issues of the day, even if he does make broader comments that many would deem political; “There is no God…There never was no God” being perhaps the most incriminating refrain in this regard. 

Whether this is a clever and sensible extraction, or a retreat to a (conspicuously) ivory tower remains in our hands to judge. The combatant in me favours the latter, the pragmatist the former. 

However, my sophomoric attempts to perform Frank Turner’s music offer a natural illumination of another recent criticism. One that is not so easily evaded. As I mentioned in previous paragraphs, the most difficult hurdle to vault in playing Turner’s music, especially for fans and gig attendees, is the fallacy of replication. Taking the transcribed, castrated, notated husk and playing life back into sheet music is a doomed task from the start, if the endgame is some rough facsimile of a groggy Nambucca, Empire or Ally Pally- wherever you saw him last, whichever night had an energy whose half-life has aged in concert with your inclination to look up chords and tab. 

That is to say, we cannot avoid being present in the songs we play. Even if we take the roles of filters, prisms or translators, we still catch, scatter and reinterpret. The salience of this becomes clear in the discussion around No Man’s Land, Turner’s most recent album telling lesser known stories of women from throughout history, most of whom are of some cultural relevance to the artist. The 13 tracks all attempt to revitalise and reanimate the women they address, reigniting, in the folk tradition, the spirit of their music and hopefully ensuring the longevity of their stories. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Godmother to Rock and Roll in the US, Egyptian feminist pioneer Huda Shaarawi, Catherine Blake and a mass grave of London prostitutes all feature on the latest record. 

Naturally, critical voices sprung from the ranks as soon as the subject matter became public knowledge. A white, cis gendered, successful male has produced a record to broadcast the voices of those whose stories were buried, burnt and eclipsed by white, cis gendered, successful males: discussion of this fact was necessary and inevitable. 

Quick to anticipate the reaction to the album, Turner has been inviting such discussion for a while, even releasing a blog post specifically addressing the potential controversy. I am eager to emphasise the potentiality here, as genuine outrage and condemnation seems to have been fairly minimal. In fact, the online discourse surrounding the album is far more centred around hypothetical discussions of theorised intention, and the assumed inevitability of a negative response from apparently unmentionable corners of the internet’s politicised communities. Such responses themselves are relatively thin on the ground. Kudos, perhaps, to Turner’s pre-emptive firefighting, as any inflammatory reactions seem to have burnt out before vinyl hit shelf. Although, this fireless affair does seem to have choked on a smokescreen of unfavourable reviews, emphatic of nothing except the mediocrity and lack of progression the record displays. 

I would not term this a departure from the previous idiosyncrasy of earlier releases, No Man’s Landdoes bear a consistent tone (thematically and lyrically, if not musically), but it is one more of superficiality, a reluctance to engage in more than a sweeping gesture or a perfunctory mention. In this way and despite his every intention, we might say Turner’s attitude towards political engagement has migrated to his music. No Man’s Land seems evasive, with normally insightful, illuminated lyrics making way for generic balladry and innocuous nods to landmark figures. For someone who is not usually afraid of the sweat and carnage of human experiences, Turner here favours pointing at the mountain from a distance, over the long climb. 

An avid historian, having studied the subject at LSE only fifteen or so years ago, he is eager to emphasise publicly that “The record is, first and foremost, a piece of story-telling – a history record, if you will, a pretty traditional folk approach.” No Man’s Landrelates to its listeners stories that have not been and are currently not being told anywhere else. A very commendable endeavour from an artist whose charitable involvement, dedication to the industry and very public desire to foster a bright future for music in the UK lend him nothing but credibility and integrity. But we cannot ignore the response to this claim, that historical significance and the necessity of telling forgotten stories are an easy shield to raise against accusations of tokenism, understatement, and in the most extreme, exploitation.

In a manner similar to the avoidance of political labels, designating a record as ‘historical’, may be interpreted as an attempt to try and exempt oneself from the contemporary political discourse, which in this case is unlikely to have been favourable to the race and gender dynamics present in the thirteen tracks of No Man’s Land. Despite his calls for discussion, Turner has arguably protected himself from the criticism he invites. Credited with the virtue of being the sole voice sounding the memories of these women, the argument that he has usurped stories which are not his to tell, in order to fuel a messianic folk- singer persona quickly fall away. There is a little merit in these accusations, mainly as the focal point of the album does still remain Frank Turner. Despite the female instrumentalists and producer, it is clearly a Frank Turner record, whose main showcase is the singing- song writing abilities of the named artist, something some may see as putting paid to his efforts to foreground the important figures the album features. 

Such accusations may hold water in some contexts, but I take issue with their purpose and direction. The current capital focus and identity driven nature of the music industry makes any form of immortalisation nigh on impossible, save for the few artists lucky enough to habitually sell platinum. In the previous paragraph, I mention how critics may condemn Turner for centring the record on his own musical efforts, using oppressed voices as a vehicle his own career progression, but I challenge any such naysayers to find me a modern record whose sole protagonist is not the artist or group who created it. 

If fault is found with No Man’s Land, it cannot be laid at Turner’s door. As he earnestly emphasises, very little money is to be made on selling an album of this form, and much effort has been made to convey the significance of the figures discussed, as well as to highlight and support women in music: the circumstances of production seem to spell good intentions.

Redemption, an excellent track on an earlier Turner album, is nigh for the artist, but No Man’s Land does also invite structural criticism. There is some greater fault, some wider injustice at play if these are the sole conditions under which the forgotten tales of such formative and ground-breaking women can surface. As Billy Bragg said of Turner’s reluctance to politicise his work “Who can blame him?”. This question, now bearing even more significance, does well to identify the extent to which such artistic output is a product of its environment and the conditions of its creation, both in terms of the critical and popular response, and the fact that the lone voice coming in aid of these fading legacies is one so readily comparable to the forces behind their original silencing. 

This album, akin to shoddy bedroom renditions of Frank Turner’s own work, will forever offer first the creator and then the subject matter; such is the immediacy of music. This detracts from neither the ethos behind the record or the vital and necessary criticisms of cultural privilege that No Man’s Land so forcibly demands. 

The Raft of Medusa: 200 Years of a Masterpiece

Olivia Hicks
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The Raft of Medusa: 200 Years of a Masterpiece

There are around 35,000 artworks in the Louvre, though of course nobody goes and sees them all. Or even anywhere close – most of us queue, check out the five or so things we’re there for, wander around a bit, then head off. Which pieces specifically will vary, person to person, but The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault is usually included: an oil painting of enormous proportions, which celebrated its 200th birthday on the 25th of last month.

The Raft of the Medusa was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1819, when Géricault was still relatively young (just twenty-seven). It’s a shipwreck scene, two pyramids of human figures, most dead, on a raft amid stormy waves. In the distance; a tiny ship, the small hope of rescue.

The painting was presented under the vague title ‘Scène de Naufrage’, but this fooled no-one; Géricault had quite clearly depicted the wreck of the French warship Méduse, which had run aground two years before. This caused murmurs and no small amount of controversy within the Academy, because the wreck of the Medusa was not a simple maritime accident – it was intensely political.

In 1816, shortly after the restoration of the French monarchy, France was preparing to take the port of Saint-Louis, in Senegal, from the British. The frigate Méduse set sail for the coast of Africa, carrying military men and their families, who would run the new colony. On the 2nd of July, she ran aground.

The Méduse hit the rock at high-tide and so couldn’t be re-floated. Passengers began to construct a sixty-foot life raft as a means of escape. When a storm threatened the integrity of the Méduse, 147 passengers climbed onto the raft: the plan was that the ships’ few lifeboats could tow the raft to shore. The lifeboat crews, however, worried that those on the raft would soon panic and start clambering onto the boats, overloading and overwhelming them. They cut the ties to the raft and sailed on to shore.

Things on the raft turned horrific pretty quickly. Thirst, suicide, drowning, murders, cannibalism. By the time the raft was found on the 17th of July, just fifteen men were still alive, and five died shortly after rescue.  The horrified response of the French people moved from a specific criticism of the incompetent captain, to a wider criticism of the Bourbon monarchy – the captain’s appointment was far more due to his monarchism than any of his seafaring capabilities. Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa was more than a lament for the lost souls of the raft; it was targeted at the French establishment.

The Raft of the Medusa is so engaging because Géricault’s method was meticulous and morbid, to the point of the unhinged. If you are chilled by the deathly pallor of the corpses splayed across the raft, there is a reason why. He frequented the hospital morgue opposite his studio, he took limbs to his studio to copy, and acquired a severed head from a convict to do the same.

Géricault made himself as familiar as possible with the real events that inspired the masterpiece: he met with survivors of the raft, he read the published account of the wreck, he commissioned a carpenter of the Méduse to build a model of the raft in his studio. If it seems obsessive, well, it obviously worked: it’s very difficult to look at The Raft of the Medusa and deny it the centre-of-stage place it’s received in art history.

The painting is known as an example of French Romanticism, a monumental work early on in the movement, but the painting’s social and political influence is arguably just as strong. The Raft of the Medusa is often touted as an abolitionist piece – Géricault met with prominent British abolitionists when he toured The Raft of the Medusa here. When he died, aged only thirty-two, he was working on another monumental piece, titled The African Slave Trade. Géricault certainly draws attention to the black soldiers on the raft, focusing particularly on one black man, held aloft, waving desperately at the ship on the horizon. Of the final fifteen survivors of the raft, only one was black, though Géricault has painted three. Géricault’s inclusion of black figures in The Raft of the Medusa is intentional, significant.

There is a danger of oversimplification – abolitionism often sat alongside racist sentiments and didn’t necessarily entail anti-colonialism. But many have chosen to understand race in art through The Raft of the Medusa, and this has become an undeniable aspect of its legacy. Toni Morrison saw relationships of race, human movement, and despair in The Raft of The Medusa as part of her The Foreigner’s Home exhibition at the Louvre. The painting also features prominently in the music video for The Carters’ APESHIT, Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s takeover of the museum. Jay-Z casts an impressive figure in front of the painting, and the music video focuses on the detail of the black sailor waving his flag to the faraway ship.

While there is the temptation to view death at sea as belonging to a lost time, a Romantic, archaic way to die, this is of course not true. In fact, after just a moment’s consideration, the relevance of the Romantic masterpiece to the present is painfully obvious: the passengers who were safe in lifeboats, became convinced that they were threatened by those in peril, and their response was to condemn them to the sea rather than offer them the help they were more than able to offer. Banksy stencilled a miniature version of the Raft of the Medusa onto a wall in Calais in 2017, one of three works in direct protest of the handling of Syrian refugees in the French port.

A 200-year-old painting is never going to be a substitute for policy, but the age of Gericault’s work has in no way dimmed the empathy and horror The Raft of the Medusa imparts on its viewer. What art can do is remind us that this is a crisis of life: the they-are-human-ness of politicised disaster.

Intricate Designs: Stanley Kubrick at the Design Museum

Alice Robijns
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Intricate Designs: Stanley Kubrick at the Design Museum

Walking around the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the London Design Museum in South Kensington, the overwhelming impression you get is of a man meticulous to a fault. Intricately planned schedules, hundreds of notecards of research and excruciating attention paid to the final edit of his films. Kubrick, for all his imagination and creativity for which his films are known, was truly a man of detailed planning and preparation. The exhibition provides a deep and insightful exploration into Kubrick’s now renowned films and the man himself.

The exhibition marks twenty years since Stanley Kubrick’s death and is the first time that the internationally acclaimed touring exhibition about his life and work is coming to Britain. This is only fitting since Kubrick worked and lived in Britain for forty years. Often cited as one of the most influential filmmakers in cinematic history, Kubrick was born in 1928 and raised in the Bronx in New York City. He first began work as a photographer for Look Magazine in the late 40s and early 50s which then evolved into making short films, and then his first major Hollywood film, The Killing in 1956. Evidently, this wasn’t a one-time foray into filmmaking for Kubrick, who went on to produce a number of now classics such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and The Shining (1980).

The exhibition starts with a room dedicated to Kubrick’s creative process. A demanding perfectionist, Kubrick asserted his vision and control over many aspects of the creative process. Kubrick’s attention to detail and fascination with all the aspects of stage design is evident from the beginning; the exhibition brings to the fore the in-depth detail he put into each of his projects. The exhibition features about 700 objects, films and interviews but a personal standout was the model of centrifuge-set that Kubrick had built for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Exquisite attention to detail for this set is clear (the actual set being 38 feet in diameter and 10 feet wide) even in just the model. My friend who accompanied me, he himself an engineer, was delighted at not only the detail but its conceivable functionality, explaining why the space travel in the film seems so possible. The juxtaposition of art and film with technical aspects of design and science was interesting to see since so often artists are portrayed as ‘bohemian’, lax creatives. Kubrick was far from this stereotype. Case in point, hundreds of notecards of research about Napoleon including what he ate and said, where and when. The exhibition shows this attention to detail was nigh on obsessive; the film about Napoleon was never actually made!

Moving through the next rooms of the exhibition, you walk through a series of rooms, each dedicated to one of Kubrick’s films. Now we see what Kubrick is so well known for: his innovation, creativity, and unique cinematography. Kubrick’s films spanned a variety of genres from Spartacus (1960) which tells the story of the real historical figure Spartacus and the events of the Third Sevile War to Lolita (1962), a controversial film after the Nabokov novel about an adult man courting a young girl. Fans of his films will be delighted by props included in the exhibition including helmets from Full Metal Jacket and parts of the space station set from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The exhibition also includes some short film excerpts so that people can familiarise themselves with pieces they don’t know. As his filmmaking progressed he ventured from realistic portrayal of events (e.g. Spartacus) to more surrealism. As Kubrick’s experience and status grew, Kubrick became more explorative with his ideas and the stories that he took on, which is evident as we move through the exhibition. His films are well known for their stunning visuals, often encapsulating the entire mood and atmosphere of the film and becoming famous beyond the film itself. A Clockwork Orange, for example, while controversial for its violent themes, had a very ardent following who took fashion inspiration from the costumes.

Super fans of his films will delight in the rooms dedicated to these films with many of the original props on display. It is interesting for any budding filmmaker or anyone interested in filmography to see how he worked. Evidently, his well-thought out plans and attention to detail is really what underpinned the success of his movies and allowed his extensive imagination to take shape in a way that has really stood the test of time.

See the exhibition at The Design Museum until 17th September.

Dark Trends: Sexy Sociopaths

William Atkinson
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Dark Trends: Sexy Sociopaths

Not for the first time, I blame Wuthering Heights.

I’m talking about the book, though I’m sure anyone who’s heard my rendition of the Kate Bush classic would say that’s pretty reproachable too. No, what I’m blaming on Emily Brontë’s iconic novel is something far more scandalous than my bad karaoke. I’d argue she started the current increasingly worrying fad of idolizing sociopaths and killers. She took the genie out of the bottle, and in the most terrifying way possible. She made them sexy.

Let’s back up a second. Google tells me a sociopath is a someone with an antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Those with ASPDs can’t understand the feelings of others. That means they’ll often break rules or make impulsive decisions without feeling guilty for the harm they might cause. From Sherlock’s titular character and his nemesis Moriarty, via the more worrying examples like Ted Bundy and Villanelle, pop culture in recent years has seen many sociopaths and killers that viewers have found fascinating – and fancyable. For that Brontë needs reprimanding.

Anyone can admit there’s something attractive about Heathcliff’s character. He’s an impassioned and mysterious loner that treats most people abysmally but still won’t let death keep him from the woman he loves. He’s obviously, blatantly, a villain. We really, really shouldn’t like him, let alone find him sexy. But people do. Maybe it’s sympathy for the unhappiness he’s suffered. Or maybe it’s because we find something inherently appealing in a talk, dark, handsome stranger who’s willing to break all the rules.

I’m not going to get into psychoanalysing a character from a book published 200 years ago. Brontë wasn’t representing a sociopath. She wasn’t going off a Wikipedia page of symptoms. She just wanted to write a bloody good book. But she created an archetype that appealed enough to readers that it hasn’t gone away since. As we’ve learnt more and more about the confusing grey splodge of the human mind, we’ve uncovered more and more of what makes sociopaths tick. As such, they’ve increasingly inhabited that attractive idiosyncratic loner role in our popular imagination. That’s a much more worrying legacy than inspiring a song by Kate Bush.

Why do people find sociopaths appealing? Psychologists suggest it’s because they have skills and abilities that today’s society needs. They’re fearless, confident and charming. James Bond would certainly be one (well, probably not Roger Moore). Don’t we all want to be a bit like that? Confident and charming, I mean, not Roger Moore. I can’t count how many times as a bookish teenager I wished I could be as clever as Sherlock, or effortlessly charming as James Bond. Sociopathic qualities aren’t necessarily a bad thing. You need that drive in leaders, whether in politics or business. The ability to stand up and go against the grain is what enables people to push boundaries and challenge received wisdom. We’d be in a poorer world without sociopaths.

But it’s when we come to the contemporary fascination with monsters like Ted Bundy that this attraction becomes not only worrying but deeply disturbing. From the young women who once swooned over him at his trial to the legions of male and female devotees and the ever-growing number of true crime series about him and others like him, there’s something about his ilk that many just can’t turn away from.  His nightmarish story has the same appeal of Heathcliff, Sherlock and Bond but twisted to the most terrifying degree. Like the Joker in his upcoming titular film, killers like him represent what people could do if they totally rejected the constraints of normal society. There’s a dark part of all of us that wishes we could do that; every time we wish we had a bit more power or charm. So, we can understand why people find these figures appealing. But they should still be horrified that they do.

What figures like Bundy show us is why we should wish we never do. Misquoting a childhood hero of mine, our idols shouldn’t just be those who aren’t scared, nervous or shy. It should be characters who are all that but do the right thing anyway. Give us the Atticus Finches of the world, over Ted Bundy, any day.

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